Hello all!
I have just finished up my second batch (all-grain) and I am beginning to think about what I'm going to brew up next in two weeks. The last two I made were using clone recipes (Dead Guy and Manny's) and I am wanting to break into designing my own recipes. I am thinking a stout this time around. Anyway, I have been doing a lot of research (much of it here) and playing around in Beer Smith and I have come up with an idea for at least the grain bill part of my recipe.

I think it would be a fairly quirky and different stout, but I also recognize that I really have NO idea what I am doing and I would greatly appreciate if any of you could point out things that I am doing that are absolutely wrong, or provide other tips. I haven't done anything for the hops yet, but if you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks for the help!

Congrats on getting into your own recipes. It's the way to go for sure. If this were my stout, I would lose the honey and victory malts. I just worry that you won't be able to taste what actually went wrong if it doesn't taste right with that many grains in the bill.

Yeah I see what you mean about it being a ton of different malts. I got a little crazy with the Beer Smithing and I can probably take out a couple of them. My aim for this recipe was to sort of focus on the "biscuity" aspects of the victory malt and try to complement it with the honey malt. The other superfluous grains were mostly just to dial in the color and perhaps add a bit more flavor. Am I on the wrong track?

Cool man. Yea, if you want that flavor keep the victory. I really feel you would hate the flavor of the honey malt in that beer.

I've always found simple is better in recipes. You were obviously thinking "biscuit stout," so I would do the Victory (more even), black patent, chocolate, and leave it there. Mash high to make up for the crystal sweetness.

That's cool to try a biscuity stout. I as well would drop the honey, though. I feel all stouts shout have some amount of roasted barley in them, but if you want to add more color and not so much of the dark malt flavors, use some de-bittered black.

That's really good to know. It's hard to try and design it based only on things like "Adds a sweet malty flavor sometimes associated with honey" haha, so I'm glad I'm bringing it here. Is there a specific percentage that I need to keep for my 2 row, or is letting it dip down into the 60s to bump up the victory and such acceptable?